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![\"Candace](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/4611321_web1_IMG_9230.jpeg\")
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Candace Houle photo<\/p>\n
Fontaine is named after late Indian City co-founder Vince Fontaine. <\/p>\n
Seeking a way to help in the community, Fontaine regularly volunteered as a child-minder during memorial events, an experience she says shaped her outlook as a musical storyteller.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up around a lot of MMIWG families. I\u2019d see their strength. I\u2019d see how these kids still had this light and this spark because of the way that families carried on the legacy of their loved ones,\u201d says the 29-year-old Anishinaabe woman, a PhD holder in physics whose non-musical work is focused on developing portable, low-cost breast cancer screening methods<\/a>.<\/p>\n The power of communal memory is the spark for Unforgotten, the latest track released by Fontaine, which was announced last week as the new moniker for Indian City, a socially conscious folk-rock group founded in 2012 by Vince Fontaine<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis name change is something we\u2019ve been talking about with (bandmate) Jay (Bodner) for a couple of years now. Whenever I do anything with this band, I have the voice of my dad in my head. He wasn\u2019t afraid of change. My dad loved to evolve,\u201d says Fontaine.<\/p>\n When Vince Fontaine died at 62 in January 2021, Gabrielle says she was fine to be \u201cbehind the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut Jay was the one who gave me the push. He said, \u2018This is a Fontaine band\u2019 and that\u2019s how the name came to be,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Fontaine considers Unforgotten to be a broadening of Through the Flood, a cut from the band\u2019s 2017 album Here & Now that marked her vocal debut with the group.<\/p>\n \u201cDark secrets, darker light, fading heartbeat, fading cries,\u201d sings Don Amero in the number\u2019s opening lyrics. He\u2019s dressed, like Vince Fontaine, in stark black and white; the only brightness comes from the fabric of the red dress worn by Gabrielle, whose voice is mostly muted and distant in the mix, an auditory metaphor made unmistakable in music-video format.<\/p>\n Now a national symbol of the MMIWG crisis, the red dress stems from the REDress project, started in 2010 by Winnipeg M\u00e9tis artist Jaime Black-Morsette and described by the artist as \u201can installation art project based on an esthetic response to this critical national issue.\u201d<\/p>\n Red dresses now hang on permanent exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, have been installed at institutions around the world and are displayed in thousands of residential and commercial windows to commemorate and honour those women, their families and their communities.<\/p>\n Last week, Black-Morsette announced on APTN that the project had been incorporated as a non-profit, intending to \u201cprovide cultural and artistic programming for Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people nationally, create programs ourselves, and also support existing programming that community and grassroots groups are already doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Released nearly a decade ago, two years after the publication of the final report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Through the Flood\u2019s power is clear, Fontaine says, adding that Unforgotten was shaped as a response to those earlier efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cThis single was made to highlight the light and love of these women. Those women and girls are still alive through the voices of their loved ones,\u201d says Fontaine, who views the song\u2019s first verse as the past, the second as the present, and the bridge as a pathway to the future.<\/p>\n Unlike Through the Flood, in which Amero\u2019s delivery and Vince Fontaine\u2019s rhythm hooks listeners from the start, on Unforgotten, the first notes are played on piano by Gabrielle, and the first voice heard is hers.<\/p>\n \u201cHer smile was a flame in the dark \/ her heart was a wandering spark,\u201d she sings, soon joined by drummer Rich Reid, guitarist Bodner and vocalist Julia Davis. \u201cShe loved to sing, dance and laugh \/ and watch the sun set its path.\u201d<\/p>\n To accompany the new song, Fontaine the band decided to shoot a music video, opting to film portions of it beneath artist Tom Andrich\u2019s mural for MMIWG, painted on the east side of the CP Rail overpass by Polo Park.<\/p>\n Completed in 2011 by Andrich \u2014 an artist, muralist and courtroom sketch artist who died in 2018, aged 72 \u2014 the mural features the names and faces of 10 Indigenous women and girls who were murdered or missing.<\/p>\n The in-studio portions of the video are still captured in black-and-white, but outside, these stories are depicted in bright colour, with family members of Cherisse Houle, Jennifer McPherson, Jennifer Johnston and Claudette Osborne holding up photographs of their loved ones.<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t Before the video finishes, a new mural painted in 2024<\/a> is shown.<\/p>\n Meaning \u201cYou Are Loved,\u201d in Anishinaabemowin, Giizaagiigo by Jeannie White Bird of Rolling River First Nation is found on the side of a Manitoba Housing building at the corner of Sargent Avenue at Kennedy Street.<\/p>\n Giizaagiigo features flowering plants, an inukshuk, a butterfly and a woman in ceremonial garb raising a sacred eagle\u2019s feather to the moon. It stretches 15 storeys high, making it the tallest mural in the province.<\/p>\n Unforgotten is available to stream now. Fontaine\u2019s first show under its new name is on Oct. 30 at the Canada Life Centre as part of the opening night of the Manito Ahbee Festival. Tickets are available at manitoahbee.com.<\/p>\n ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Ben Waldman Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University\u2019s (now Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Reporter
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